Dear Belle,

Welcome to Saint Mary's. You don't know me, but I'm one of the young women who used to have the dorm room you will be living in this year. Your new room was my home for ten whole months last year.

When you pull up to the front door with your packed car and loved ones in just over a month, you'll be so excited to see your room. I know from experience that it will look like a blank canvas. You may not be able to imagine how this place could be better than your bedroom back at home. It may not seem like much, I mean, it's just a dorm room after all. That's what I thought too when I arrived on Orientation Weekend.

As the year went on, though, it became so much more than the big open space it was that first day. It became filled with memories. It was the place where I met my first friends at Saint Mary's, one whom I knew, two that I didn't. It's the place where I stayed up until the crack of dawn trying to finish papers and projects for class the next day. It's the place where my sisters stayed during Little Sibs Weekend. It's the place where I returned with two of my roommates soaked to the skin after getting lost trying to go see our third roommate play at the first Midnight Drummer's Circle of the football season. It's the place where my roommates, our friends, and I watched our favorite movies and Netflix shows while eating popcorn and macaroni and cheese together on the futon. It's the place where we turned our Christmas tree into a multi-holiday tree with all different decorations because we were too lazy to take the thing down until the week we moved out. The place we blasted our favorite music on our speakers. Where we filled the walls with our pictures of our families and friends back home and eventually with photos of the four of us together.

I hope it will become more than just a dorm room for you- I started absentmindedly calling it "home" after a few months. I hope you will make good memories with your friends and roommates in that room. I hope you will laugh and cry and celebrate and have dance parties there. I hope it will become like home to you like it did for me. I hope you will be proud to call SMC your new home as well.

Good luck,

A fellow Belle